Month: September 2005 (page 1 of 1)

24 September 2005

Fantastic Customer Service

I’ve had the most fantastic piece of customer service ever in the last week.

Recently I decided that enough was enough and returned my Mont Blanc fountain pen for a refund; a pen I’d wanted since I was in my early twenties. When I was out of work just over two years ago I promised myself one once I got a decent job.

Having secured the job it still took me nine months to buy myself one mostly due to the high price tag they carry. I loved the pen; it wrote beautifully but never felt very robust or worth the high price. In the space of a year it went back to Mont Blanc twice as the clip came loose. When the same fault occurred for the third time I decided enough was enough and back it went.

I tried to kid myself and use a cheaper pen but it didn’t feel right. I bought the Mont Blanc partly with some birthday money from my Grandmother and Mother and worked bloody hard for the rest. The pen was more than just something to write with.

Having briefly used a Pelikan in the past and knowing how well made they are I decided upon one to replace the Mont Blanc.

The 800 series is the same size as my old Mont Blanc 146 and so I started looking around for an M805 – the version with silver rather than gold trim. I found a good price online and ordered one.

It arrived quickly but I was disappointed; it wrote terribly with a very dry and fine line. I contacted the seller, as Pelikan offer a twenty eight day nib exchange if you are unhappy, who said that I would need to send it back to the importer which I duly did.

On a pen costing that much I’d of liked a little more help. I decided to swap for a bold nib assuming that the original medium nib was indicative of Pelikan medium nibs. This was mistake as the bold felt very dull and expressionless to me.

At this time I fancied ordering a bottle of Pelikan ink to try and had seen pictures of a special bottle with a built in pens stand so ordered one from Ray Adams at Pelikan Pens UK an independent Peikan dealer who has turned out to be the one the best people I have ever dealt with.

In the email exchange to order the ink Ray asked what pen I had. I told him and explained my situation and Ray suggested I call him to talk more. Ray thought the original medium I had must have been faulty and offered to help.

Now bear in mind that I did not buy the pen from Ray but he offered to send me another medium nib to try as well as a bold for comparison at no charge to me. Two Pelikan nibs together cost almost £300 and Ray just popped them in the post to me.

I honestly didn’t think that anybody operated on trust and provided such amazing service anymore. I was delighted and a little humbled.

Ray is a gentleman who cares about people and service. If you are in the market for a new fountain pen. ballpen, pencil or even just some ink I wholeheartedly recommend Pelikan Pens UK.

15 September 2005

How Many Blades Do You Need?

I’ve just read about Gillette’s new razor the ‘Fusion’ – this thing has five blades PLUS a sixth blade on the rear for ‘precision trimming’.

For Pete’s sake how many blades do you need? Well I’ll tell you. One.

When I started shaving as a teenager I hated it; I had terrible razor rash, and suffered the whole day with a sore face. The problem was I really had no idea how to shave. I eventually gave in and grew a kinda beard; looking back on old photographs this was a mistake.

A year or so later I was in the Body Shop buying something or other, and found a small leaflet that changed everything. I can’t remember what it was called, but it should have been called Shaving For Dummies. I quickly read it, and thought ahhhh so that’s how you do it. Pretty much everything I’d be doing was wrong.

I went and bought a razor and shaving cream and have never looked back.

Being the compulsive obsessive gadget freak I am I have tried many different razors, gels, soaps, creams and oils and over time have found that the simpler the product the better the result. This is why I find the new multi-blade razors so amusing.

I’m now shaving with what can only be described as retro equipment.

I use a traditional shaving brush and shaving cream; my brand of choice is George Trumper, I’m currently using the sandalwood which is marvellous. The recipe hasn’t changed since King Edward was on the thrown and it is amazing. You need just to dip the end of your brush’s bristles in the cream and you will have more lather than you can use.

Then I use a Merkur Razor – yep that’s right a safety razor like your Dad or your Grandad used albeit a very nice modern take on a classic design.

You’ll notice that this razor has only one blade in contact with your face at a time but you know what… I have never had a more comfortable or closer shave in my life.

The secret to a good shave is water and warmth.

Shave after your morning shower or bath as this will help make your beard softer and easier to shave.
Use a brush as this helps work the shaving cream into your beard and most importantly lifts the hairs from your skin making them even easier to shave.
Use a sharp blade. Use as many as you wish but you have to try a classic safety razor.
Rinse with cold water to close the pores.
Use an after shave balm or cream DO NOT use aftershave unless you want to undo all your hard work.

Most importantly – enjoy.

13 September 2005

2-1=1 or How I Came to Choose My Smartphone

In earlier articles I outlined my requirements for a Smartphone and the models I was considering; the Treo 650 and the Sony Ericsson P910i.

The P910i won over the Treo 650 for one reason only – the Treo’s weight and bulk. The Treo is awesome but just too heavy and bulky to carry around in your pocket. Then I had to ditch the P910i as it just would not sync well with my Mac.

I’m now using the Nokia 6680 which I am very happy with.

So what was good and bad about each device and how did I end up with the 6680?

Treo 650

The Treo was amazing. The Palm OS has been extremely well adapted for one handed operation with any activity being carried out with the 5 way d-pad and the keyboard. The Treo 650 is still touch screen but I only used the stylus to reset the Treo after installing software.

One very impressive part of the Treo experience was the lack of initial configuration required to set it up. I popped in my sim card and switched it on. I went to the Preferences section to set it up and found that it had configured itself based on my sim – excellent.

The Treo 650 has a fantastic screen, the keyboard is great – much easier to use than it looks, Bluetooth works well and being Palm OS syncs very well with my Mac and has a huge range of software available.

Sadly the Treo 650 was just too heavy and bulky to carry with me at all times. As soon as Treo develop a lighter thinner version I’ll seriously consider using one again.

Sony Ericsson P910i

The P910i is only marginally smaller and lighter than the Treo 650 but feels more compact in the hand and in the pocket.

My first reaction to the P910i was a real dislike of the user interface. Where the Treo was magnificently one handed in use the P910i was very much two handed with virtually nothing being possible without using the stylus and touch screen. Of course this is how UIQ was designed.

The P910i is a Symbian based phone. Symbian build the core OS but do not build or include the user interface (UI). I’ve always thought this a mistake but that’s the way it is. There are two UIs for Symbian currently used in mass market phones; Sony Ericsson’s UIQ (originally owned by Symbian but spun off ) and Nokia’s Series 60. UIQ is designed as a two handed UI and Series 60 is a one handed UI.

I think because I went to the P910i from the Treo 650 I was focussed on using the mini thumb board. This looks like a great addition to the phone but is actually useless. Once I’d started using the stylus driven character recognition for data entry I got on better with the P910i but still struggled with UIQ.

UIQ feels very dated and very clunky with a number of inconsistencies in how you interact with the device. The fonts used are horrible and aren’t anti-aliased (there is no cleartype or other sub-pixel rendering) so they look terrible and the display itself is not great. Most of the tasks are accessed from drop down menus which is pretty poor.

I think I accepted the P910i as a fait accompli for a Mac syncing Smartphone. However, once the P910i started throwing sync wobblers with my Mac on most syncs it was time for it to go to the technology graveyard we call eBay. The best thing about this was that I made 25% profit on selling the P910i… nice.

So where did this leave me? For a short time I thought I’d go back to two boxes with my Motor RAZR and my Palm but really that’s what I wanted to get away from.

Then I fell in love with the Sony Ericsson K750i with its auto-focus 2 mega pixel camera so decided to pick one up.

The K750i is a great phone and the camera is awesome by sadly the construction of the phone is poor. The way the rear of the phone has been constructed to facilitate the sliding lens cover makes it very weak and both the examples I had creaked and squeaked as you used the keyboard. Not good enough and so it was returned.

Nokia 6680

I then became aware of the Nokia 6680. I hadn’t really looked at Nokia’s for years having hated the old Series 40 UI that came on all the pretty crappy phones that employers had foisted upon me. I also think that Nokia designed some of the dullest phones on the market although they now seem to be having a Motorola RAZResque renaissance whilst Motorola are losing the plot… Q anyone?

Once Apple added native ISync support for the Nokia 6680 I decided that it had to worth a look. After reading a number of reviews online and then getting my hands on one in a store I decided that it was the Smartphone for me.

The Nokia 6680 and the latest version of Series 60 deliver Smartphone power with mobile phone ease of use.

I’d looked at Nokia Series 60 Smartphones in the past but been put off by their uninspiringly designed exteriors and overly designed keypads.

The 6680 is a refreshingly conventional for Nokia candy bar design with a good sized screen and easier to use than it looks keypad. It is smaller than the P910i but larger than a normal ‘dumbphone’.

This extra size is partly accounted or4 by the fact that the 6680 is a 3G phone and includes two cameras allowing easy video calling. 3G wasn’t a key driver for me in choosing the 6680 but once I’d experienced it whilst trying out the phone I was a convert. Even when the phone drops back to GPRS it is still quick enough for basic browsing and email.

Series 60 and Symbian combine to deliver a very easy to use but very powerful Smartphone. The built in applications are on the whole very good with the usual calendar, contacts, messaging with SMS, MMS and email etc. In addition to the usual suspects the 6680 comes with Quickoffice which allows viewing of Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, Adobe Acrobat viewer, video and music players and more.

One of the pluses of Series 60 over UIQ on Symbian is the much greater range of software available. See with Symbian not including the UI and there being two different UIs for Symbian developers have to develop two different versions; Nokia have the biggest market share and so developers develop for that UI.

Another reason that I was very keen to have a Series 60 smartphone was to use TomTom Mobile 5 GPS satellite navigation software. I’m using this with a Slim III Bluetooth GPS receiver and it works brilliantly. This is the first tech purchase my wife has ever spontaneously approved of as she now no longer needs to navigate.

Opera have released version 8 of their browser for Series 60 and it works fantastically; bringing a very close to desktop browsing experience to a handheld.

The only gripe I have with the phone is the homescreen that Orange have added to their versions of this phone. Nokia have developed a good active standby screen that provides easier and quicker access to many more functions all of which a easily tailored to your needs but sadly Orange have ‘branded’ the phone with their in-house design. There is no way to switch off this homescreen and as it is part of the firmware; the only way to remove it is to have the phone updated to the latest generic Nokia firmware which I will have done as soon as I can find somebody to do so and stop dropping it in my coffee.

The Nokia 6680 is one of the best phones I have ever used and I’m very happy with a one box Smartphone solution.

12 September 2005

Hurricane Katrina

The BBC has a compelling column entitled Survival of the Fittest by Harold Evans discussing the social and political after effects of Hurricane Katrina.

After so many years of Social Darwinism, Hurricane Katrina could reawaken the American people’s appetite for compassion in government.

I sincerely hope that he is right.

I have wanted to post my thoughts, feelings and reaction to Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath but have struggled to clarify them enough to put pen to paper.

The hurricane itself was terrible but what followed was in many ways much worse.

There was the institutional arrogance of America, Americans and American Govt. that told itself it won’t happen to us… despite being warned in explicit detail that it would. Oh and building a city between a lake and a river that you have to hold back via levees seems a bad idea to me.

There was George Bush’s spectacular failure to lead (again) but even more importantly to care. Kanye West said it best when he said George Bush don’t like black people. It seems clear to me, as to the entire intelligent population of the free world I’m sure, that if this disaster has hit the East Coast (Connecticut, the Hamptons, Boston etc.) that the aid and help would have arrived much quicker.

The rapid breakdown of law and order that followed and particularly what took place inside the convention centre stunned and shocked me. At a time when the people should have rallied together and cared for one another they instead descended into looting, murder and rape. The right to bear arms is marvellous huh…

When Bush eventually appeared he missed the point and talked not about what they would do then to save people but about how they would rebuild New Orleans and even mentioned the Governor building a great new house. WTF?

Now we see the contracts to rebuild being awarded to Bush’s cronies such as Halliburton as happened in Iraq. How can this be legal and how can the US people allow this to happen.

6 September 2005

Caffeinated Smartphone

I was sitting quietly this morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and my 6680 in the other.

The next thing I know the phone has slipped out of my hand and landed cleanly in my coffee. It actually looked rather funny, but needless to say it has stopped working.

I’m now very pleased that I took out insurance; my new phone arrives by courier tomorrow morning.

1 September 2005

Breathe

Fresh morning air and low summer sun,
the air not yet polluted by the day,
cool on my face and crisp in my lungs,
the beauty of the early morning.